#nerd article

A Fellow Nerd, Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Winn Sanderson was born on December 19, 1975, in Lincoln, Nebraska, making him 50 years old as of 2026.

He is a celebrated fantasy and science fiction author, father, and husband.

A lot of people like his worlds, magic systems, and characters. I like his worlds and magic systems.

I really should read his books. I want to start with Mistborn or The Way of Kings. As someone who wants to be a fantasy author, I feel there is a lot to learn from him. If you are another person who loves this genre, there are some things you can learn from him, but not everything will work for you.

I get that his style of fantasy is not for everyone. Not everyone likes hard magic systems. I get that. It does not work with every fantasy story or its themes and world; sometimes less is more.

The Night Shift

Mr. Sanderson completed his B.A. and M.A. in English at Brigham Young University in Utah. During his studies, he worked as a night auditor at a local hotel, which gave him the quiet hours needed to draft his early manuscripts.

Korean Mission

Before switching his major to English, he initially studied biochemistry and took a two-year leave to volunteer as an LDS missionary in South Korea. He later noted that Korean linguistics helped inspire the magic system in his debut novel, Elantris.

The Cosmere

The Cosmere: Most of his epic fantasy series (including Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive) take place in a shared universe called the Cosmere. Characters and world-hopping entities often connect these stories together.

The Wheel of Time

In 2007, Robert Jordan, the author of The Wheel of Time, passed away.

After Robert Jordan's passing, Jordan's widow selected Sanderson to complete the final three massive installments of Jordan's legendary The Wheel of Time series, finishing with A Memory of Light in 2013.

His First Novel

He started writing his first novel when he was fifteen years old. He didn't have a computer; he had an old electric typewriter.

It would remember your file on a disc, but it was really just a printer with an attached bare-bones word processor. (It had a tiny LCD screen at the top that could display three lines at a time.

You could scroll through and edit bit by bit, then you hit print and it would type out the document.)

The book was terrible. It was essentially a hybrid of Tad Williams and Dragonlance, though at the time he felt it was totally new and original.

It did have a wizard who threw fireballs with smiley faces on the front, though, so that's kind of cool.

At its core were two stories. One was the tale of a wise king who was murdered by assassins, forcing his younger brother to take up the mantle and lead the kingdom while trying to find and protect the king's son and rightful heir.

The other was about a young man named Rick, originally blamed for the murder.

He still has some of these pages. (Not the entire book, unfortunately.) He used to hide them behind a picture on the wall of his room so that nobody would find them.

He was so anxious about letting people read his writing and was, for some reason, paranoid that his family would find the pages and read them, then make fun of them.